Agreed. In addition, I’m a firm believer that software should be silent unless something is wrong, and even for non-commercial software there should be the option to have upgrades be automatic and silent.
It kinda gets annoying over the years that I still get about a dozen applications that seem to always want my attention for trivial stuff that can certainly wait until I’m done with my current task or be automatically done without interrupting my current task.
Basically, software management should be invisible. When you look at the big picture, what I want (and what I’m sure everybody wants) is a computer that just works.
My vision is to sit down, perform a business, personal, time management, or entertainment task, and that’s it. The “computer” is just some device that happens allows me to do those things. The OS and background applications are invisible unless I want them.
I’m thinking about my current PDA - I turn it on, check the calendar, and turn it off. My “ultimate computer” is the same way - I open up the application for the task I want, perform the action I intend to take, then move to the next task (which may or may not be on my computer).
So the ultimate OS is pretty much an application launcher, and the primary focus should be the task the user is engaged in. So, for all practical purposes, even though we certainly need things like antivirus and firewalls, they should not demand our attention unless it is crucial we need to do something else now.
That’s pretty much why many users are suffering from “popup fatigue” where they simply click “yes” on everything. It’s not necessarily that they’re stupid or lazy - it’s that it happens so often and in such unhelpful ways that they just give up.
Comodo’s products are, alas, not always helpful in this respect.
-The antivirus uses popups to inform the user that the database is updated. IMHO, this isn’t really needed. Nothing went wrong, something just went right. Which means this doesn’t make the list of “things crucial for the user to know.”
-The firewall and Defense+ has a lot of popups. The most important are those asking the user to allow an application. Unfortunately, there are too many and they are too complicated. There are too many because Comodo’s firewall and Defense+ have their own separate popups and often work at a granular level, allowing to “allow” and “deny” separate actions. They are too complicated because again they are granular, allowing the user to select between separate “policies” for applications.
Problem is, this level of granularity, while very inviting to power users, is not really following my idea of a “quiet computer” where the single, primary focus is on my application.
I’m not saying get rid of all of the power user stuff - just allow it to be simplified if we want. You can keep a “power user” mode that can be turned on if you want.
Ideally, the popup should be simple: Allow or Deny. And it should set both the firewall and Defense+ to either allow or deny the application.
If you want to add an additional button to something like say “Allow as a limited application” that may be okay - as a button, not as a dropdown list as it currently is. Ideally, the user just hits the right button, it sets both firewall and Defense+, and it dissappears. No radio buttons, no dropdown lists. Just buttons.
And of course, I cast my vote for a silent installer.